I want to cry because I want to be happy. I want to start a new chapter in my life, free from the old.
It’s not like I haven’t been happy the last couple of years, but there’s always been something in the background, weighing me down. A weight that is like cement, making me feel stuck in myself. My breath has been shallow because of a pain at the core of myself that I fear to touch. It might burst, and I would bleed all over.
Life stopped moving through me. I feared what might come next. A new shock, another tragedy so I froze and stopped breathing.
But life moves on. I move on even as I continue to love those I’ve lost. Life is here. Now.
I sense rainbow light on the horizon — a new chapter. Beauty waiting, living a life that's free of guilt, free of old thoughts and beliefs. I want to be a kid again. When did I stop running for the sheer joy of it? When did I stop putting on my shoes in the morning, feeling that beautiful, bubbling expectation of what the day might bring? When did joy become a place of danger?
It’s challenging to be happy when people around us are suffering. Perhaps that’s why I tucked joy away because my mom, my sister, my dad were sick. But at times I sense the presence of my dad who I lost, smiling, nearly pleading with me to be happy — asking me not to carry his death inside of me. Everything returns to life, eventually.